John Ford's last feature film is generally considered a dud except by hard-core auteurists such as Andrew Sarris. It's a spectacularly untypical work, being about a group of women in 1935 China. Anne Bancroft is an atheist, chain-smoking, pants wearing doctor, a part clearly intended for Katherine Hepburn but she does well with it.
I guess the Ford films it's closest to that I can think of is Drums Along the Mohawk and Stagecoach - an outpost of civilisation in a hostile part of the world that comes under siege. But it's so different - it's in China, the Irish quotient is low, it's about mostly women, there are no comic drunks and/or blacks, it lacks the poetry, there's no worshipped military.
Really this should have been made in the 1930s when Yellow Peril cinema was very popular. The studio setting would have suited it more then, so too would the non Asians pretending to be Asians (e.g. Woody Strode) and it's more melodramatic aspects such as Bancroft giving up her loving to a Chinese warlord to save her colleagues, then killing herself. That feels more 19th century. And there were some things that really got on my nerves - that whining character played by Betty Field and Bancroft's incessant smoking.
But it's consistently interesting - Margaret Leighton's head missionary has clearly lustful designs on Sue Lyon (she's a cutey - it's a shame she didn't have more of a solid career), Bancroft is very funny, several of the characters are three-dimensional, the acting is pretty good, the sheer novelty of it (Ford's last film, all women, etc etc) keep you watching. Also the last third when the warlords move in is quite exciting - the action is quick and ruthless, you really feel the girls are in danger. Not bad just a film out of its time.
No comments:
Post a Comment